Today a supporting UK grant-making Foundation has offered to match the first £3,000 towards our Educating Reeti appeal! So your £10 gift automatically becomes £20 for ChoraChori. That’s great news for the kind supporters who have already donated £2,254 at the time of writing. But there’s still £750 in matching funds available for new donors. Please donate and share this message and let’s make a difference in Nepal.

In our last film we profiled Anita, the nine year old girl who faces a daily uphill struggle, literally, in getting to her village school in Nepal. Here is her mother explaining why education matters to her. Note the smoke levels inside her home. Such domestic air pollution is common in Nepali villages and contributes to a great deal of respiratory illness.

One of the major challenges that ChoraChori has to contend with in reuniting children with families is that sometimes the children they rescue from India give false family details. Alok’s story is a case in point. The Salaam Baalak Trust handed this sixteen-year-old to the ChoraChori rescue team during its last visit to Delhi. At the time Alok had said that his parents weren’t alive and that his uncle who had been caring for him had abandoned him so he had travelled to Delhi to look for work.

The team was suspicious so field worker Rita Mokhtan was set to work contacting police stations in the Districts of Saptari and Jajarkot, (opposite ends of Nepal!) based upon addresses that Alok had offered. Finally Rita found his family – and the truth. Both parents were alive and quite well off. They said that Alok had run away after they’d threatened to take him out of school and put him to work as someone had told them that Alok had started smoking marijuana (perhaps incorrectly). Their intention had only been to scare him out of a bad habit. Once they realised he had run away they contacted the police and also put an ad on local newspapers offering to pay money to anyone who could help them get the child back, but to no avail.

After speaking with the parents, Shailaja and team interviewed Alok who finally admitted the truth. He spoke to his family over the phone and the parents came to Kathmandu for an emotional reunion last Sunday – and a big hug from his mother. The ChoraChori team is back in Delhi at the time of writing but after they return they’ll follow up the case and ensure that the reunification has been a success.

Nine year old Anita attends Chapakharka village school in the hills to the southeast of Kathmandu. She is one of the children who will benefit from our “Educating Reeti” crowdfunding campaign that launched at 2 p.m. today. Between now and the 18th July we’re aiming to raise £36,090 towards completing the building of three earthquake-destroyed village schools, including Chapakharka, and covering daily costs including free lunches that will encourage children to return to school.

You can help us by donating using the link below but above all by sharing this post with your friends. Let’s deliver funds to the point of greatest need in Nepal! #educatingreeti

Over the coming three years ChoraChori plans to rescue 300 Nepali children from India. Based upon the outcome of our 60 rescues since August we can now safely assume that one third of those rescued cannot be returned to families. This is because we don’t know the family whereabouts or because the domestic circumstances won’t allow it. Many children run away from abuse, often meted out by a step-parent and clearly they can’t (or won’t) be returned to that violence. This is why at least in the short term we require a refuge facility in the absence of significant foster care arrangements. And that implies major – hair-raising – childcare costs. These can only rise even further as a ten year programme to counter cross-border child trafficking runs its course. That is an inconvenient truth and we can only hope that our fundraising matches our operational ambitions.

Within the 20 children who are currently at the Kathmandu refuge there’s clearly significant talent. At least two of the boys have university potential. And one of the kids, Usan, beat me at chess at a refuge picnic yesterday. I put that down to jet-lag, being distracted by the loud background music or something like that. But given that I was able to beat Sir Richard Branson at chess clearly we could have an entrepreneur on our hands. We have to find the money not only to care for these children who have nothing else to fall back upon and allow them to realise their full potential.

I was very privileged today to accompany my wonderful colleagues at ChoraChori Nepal and ChoraChori UK Trustee Julie Graham on a visit to the three schools that we are helping to recover after the earthquakes – three schools being rebuilt and children who are growing in confidence about their schooling. We took with us school clothes and shoes that were well received by the kids who come from really poor families in the remote hills above Kathmandu. I also got to meet Reeti, the figurehead for our appeal “Educating Reeti” that we’ll launch on the 13th June. That’ll be your chance to support some great grassroots charity work in Nepal. Meantime please take a moment to like us on Facebook!

Bhaskar proud to be the Chairman of the Nepal NGO ChoraChori

ChoraChori Nepal distributing shoes and clothes to the children at Chapakharka school

Material support to the needy children in the hills above Kathmandu

Delivering welcome presents to the children at Chapakharka

Distributing presents to the children outside their temporary learning centre at Chapakharka

After last year’s earthquakes there was a priority to restore education in the affected Districts as quickly as possible. This involved constructing so-called “Temporary Learning Centres” (TLCs) which could provide some basic shelter while schools were rebuilt. Sadly a newly-released report by five aid agencies including UNICEF and Save the Children entitled “Children’s Voices, Children’s Rights” has flagged up the shortcomings of the arrangement. Attendances remain low and there is likely to be a very negative impact on children’s education given how long it’s taken to replace these flimsy shelters with proper earthquake-resistant schools. These TLCs are woefully inadequate for the approaching monsoon season and many children – 30% – continue to study in unsafe buildings. There’s also a legacy of trauma. Our Chairman, Bev Holmes, witnessed this first-hand when she visited a TLC (pictured) at Rayale, Kavre District, with a film crew last November. A little girl in the class began to cry and when asked the reason a teacher explained that since the earthquakes she couldn’t cope with new faces and being “crowded”.

ChoraChori is doing what it can to help from its limited resources. We are not only rebuilding three schools (in spite of the difficulties that have arisen through water shortages and forest fires) but also aiming to restore confidence and attendances by providing short term revenue support. This includes through providing learning materials and free school lunches. You can help us through our forthcoming “Educating Reeti” campaign that will launch on 13th June and run for five weeks.

Do you have a personal link to a school that can support us with some fundraising? If you do, please drop us a line to info@chorachori.org.uk.

Children’s Voices, Children’s Rights June 1st, 2016Philip Holmes

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